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Something for everyone at October recycling events in Lowell

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
10/08/2012 09:53:52 AM EDT

LOWELL -- Let me start with a brief reminder. The Columbus Day holiday will be observed by city employees. City Hall, the Health Department and DPW (including the Solid Waste and Recycling office) will be closed today.

This week, curbside collection of city trash, recycling and yard waste will be on a holiday schedule, delayed one day with Friday's route being collected on Saturday, Oct. 13. Place material out for collection by 7 a.m. on the new collection day, but not before 4 p.m. the previous afternoon.

Lowell has partnered with North East Material Handling, at 38 Prince Ave., the former Prince/Borden Spaghetti factory off Moore Street. The event accepts everything "with a cord" -- from lamps to an electric lawnmowers, from ACs to TVs.

In addition, they have bins for scrap metal and broken bulky rigid-plastic items like molded-plastic lawn chairs, kid slides, kiddie pools and old trash cans and damaged recycling bins. The North East event only accepts cash. More details are at www.RecycleLowell. com. This month's second-Saturday event is co-sponsored by Fio's Express Pizza, a GreenTeam Partner.

If you can't attend the dropoff event, there are alternatives. If you have a burgundy city trash cart you can schedule a curbside appointment with Allied Waste (978-649-7564) for CRTs (TVs and monitors) and appliances.

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Allied accepts Mastercard/Visa or debit cards over the phone. If you don't have city trash you can visit a local Best Buy. They accept consumer electronics, like CRTs, VCR/DVRs, laptops and CPUs. Most recycled items are free. At Staples you pay $10 for the monitor, but they accept all peripherals at no cost.

Saturday, Oct. 27, from 8 a.m. until noon the city's Regional Waste Water Utility plant -- also known as Duck Island, at 451 First Street Blvd. (Route 110 on the Dracut line) hosts a drop-off event for used oil and other items. Residents can bring uncontaminated used motor oil, medical sharps (in puncture-proof containers such as a laundry-detergent bottle with screw-on cap), CFLs and rechargeable batteries.

Alkaline batteries (AAA, AA, C, D and 9-volt) are not accepted. Those can go in regular household trash.

The third event is open all month.

If you live in a building that is not eligible for municipal curbside services, the zero-sort recycling drop-off container at DPW at 1365 Middlesex St. is the solution for you. The recycling Dumpster has three sliding windows. Because it's zero-sort it can accept mixed household recyclables, better defined as clean paper (newspaper, magazines, phone books, paperboard -- cereal and tissue boxes, junk mail, catalogs and brochures and milk and juice boxes) and clean bottles and cans (glass jars and bottles, steel/tin/aluminum cans and plastic containers numbers 1 through 7).

Just like curbside recycling, this drop-off container does not accept Styrofoam or plastic bags. Next to the zero-sort container you will find a blue cardboard-only Dumpster also open to the public. All boxes must be flattened. The facility is open to the public Monday through Saturday from 8:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. Follow the signs from the front gate.

All of these recycling opportunities are detailed on the Solid Waste and Recycling office website: www.LowellRecycle.org.

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